AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post includes information about a television program that some readers of this blog post may have not watched yet. Additionally, information about the television program that is the subject of this blog post is based on an aired pilot episode of the series; information about the format of future episodes of the series may differ from the format of the aired pilot episode. Furthermore, the pilot episode may have not aired on all NBC affiliates in the United States, although the NBC affiliate in my area of the country (WAND-TV) did air the pilot episode.

Some game show ideas are bad. Some game show ideas are good, but not well executed. Then there’s game show ideas that are rip-offs of other game shows or elements of other game shows.

NBC’s latest attempt at a primetime game show is called The Wall, which aired its pilot episode last night, with the series premiere proper scheduled for next month. The show gets its name from a giant wall with pegs on it that is designed to allow an object to drop between the pegs into one of multiple slots. I think I remember this concept from another game show…

The central part of the game is not much more than a blatant ripoff of Plinko, a longtime pricing game that appears frequently on the CBS game show The Price is Right (TPiR). However, there are some key differences between The Wall and Plinko…whereas Plinko’s only major secondary element is a small-item pricing segment, The Wall has multiple and completely different secondary elements, including trivia questions and an isolation chamber.

The Wall is played by a couple working as a team, and the game has four rounds (although the fourth round is effectively an extension of each the first three rounds):

The first round involves either member of the couple having to hit a button corresponding to one of two possible answers to a trivia question. If they guess correctly before the first of three balls falls into any slot at the bottom of the wall, the total cash amount associated with each slot with a ball in it is added to the couple’s bank. If they guess incorrectly or fail to lock in an answer before the first of three balls falls into any slot at the bottom of the wall, the total cash amount associated with each slot without a ball in it is removed from the couple’s bank. If the couple has a positive amount of money in the bank, the couple goes on to the second round. If the couple were to have a negative amount of money in the bank after the first round, the game ends and the couple wins nothing.

The second and third rounds play in a similar manner with a few differences. One of the members of the couple go to an isolation chamber and are responsible for answering multiple-choice trivia questions with three (second round) or four (third round possible answers, while the other contestant is responsible for making decisions about what slot at the top of the wall to drop red (two + one for each incorrect trivia answer in second round, four + one for each incorrect trivia answer in third round) or green (two + one for each correct trivia answer in second round, four + one for each correct trivia answer in third round) balls from. The two (second round) and four (third round) automatic red balls must be dropped from the same slots at the top of the wall as the automatic green balls were dropped from at the start of the round in question. Additionally, the contestant not in the isolation chamber has the option of playing two balls from the same slot of the top of the wall on the second trivia question of the second and third rounds, as well as the option of playing three balls from the same slot of the top of the wall on the third trivia question of the second and third rounds; the decision must be made prior to the trivia question being asked to the contestant in the isolation chamber. Wherever a red ball lands results in money being removed from the couple’s bank, and wherever a green ball lands results in money being added to the couple’s bank. However, if a red ball lands in a slot worth more money than what is in the couple’s bank, the couple’s bank goes to $0, not to a negative dollar amount (this happened once on the aired pilot episode, at the end of the second round). The second-from-the-right slot at the bottom of the wall is valued at $250,000 (second round) and at $1,000,000 (third round)

The fourth round does not involve the use of the wall, but, instead, involves a decision that the contestant in the isolation chamber must make involving a contract. A contract is offered to the contestant in the isolation chamber, and the contestant in the isolation chamber has the option of either signing the contract or ripping the contract up. The contestant in the isolation chamber is not told how many questions he/she answered correctly in the second and third rounds, nor is the contestant in the isolation chamber told how much money is in the bank after the third round. If the contract is signed, the couple wins the amount of money in the bank after the first round, plus $20,000 for each correctly-answered trivia question in the second and third rounds. If the contract is ripped up, the couple wins the amount of money in the bank after the third round, if there is any money in the bank after the third round.

Unfortunately, there are several major cracks in the The Wall:

As I mentioned earlier, the centerpiece of the game is a blatant ripoff of Plinko from TPiR. I’m not an attorney, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if FremantleMedia (the company that produces TPiR for CBS) were to sue NBC and the producers of The Wall (which include host Chris Hardwick and professional basketball player LeBron James, among others).

The show appeared to lack a traditional game show announcer; as a result, Hardwick announced himself as the host at the start of the show (normally, game show hosts are introduced at the start of an episode by an off-camera announcer), however, the crowd cheering Hardwick’s entrance drowned out Hardwick introducing himself to the television audience.

The trivia questions are very easy for a show where it is possible for a couple to win $12,000,000 in cash.

It would be possible for a couple to answer every single trivia question correctly and win absolutely nothing, and it would also be possible for a couple to win nearly a million dollars with as few as two correct trivia answers (one in the first round, and one in the third round).

Now, there have been far worse game shows that have aired on American television (such as this one) than The Wall, but it looks like NBC might be tearing down The Wall sooner than later.

AUTHOR’S NOTE #1: Since the U.S. Women’s Open golf championship is one of many women’s golf tournaments used to determine qualification for the women’s golf tournament at the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, International Olympic Committee (IOC) country codes for players in the U.S. Women’s Open are noted in parenthesis following the first mention of their full names below the divider.

AUTHOR’S NOTE #2: Anna Nordqvist’s last name is pronounced nord-KWIST

On the second of three holes played in yesterday’s three-hole aggregate playoff for the U.S. Women’s Open golf championship at CordeValle golf course in California (the playoff used holes 16, 17, and 18, in that order), Anna Norqvist (SWE) touched sand while addressing her ball, which was at rest and located in a bunker. Normally, when a player illegally grounds his/her club in a bunker or water hazard in a golf event, he/she will call a penalty on himself/herself. However, in Nordqvist’s case, it was not visibly obvious to her that she had illegally grounded her club in the bunker, and, in fact, only a FOX camera showing a close-up of Nordqvist’s address of the ball showed that Nordqvist had, in fact, touched sand while addressing her ball in a bunker. The USGA conducted a video review, and, after both players in the playoff had started playing the final hole of the playoff, they were both notified of the penalty assessed to Nordqvist for breach of Rule 13-4, which prohibits a player from, when his/her ball is at rest in a bunker or water hazard, touching water, sand, the ground, or loose impediments with the club, except when striking the ball itself. The penalty for breach of Rule 13-4 during stroke play, which was used for all four rounds of regulation and the three-hole aggregate playoff, is two strokes on the hole which the breach of the rule occurred. Brittany Lang (USA) went on to win the U.S. Women’s Open by three playoff strokes; had Nordqvist not been assessed a penalty, Lang would have still won, but only by one playoff stroke.

Here’s the video of Nordqvist grounding her club in the bunker:

Watch the sand move. Anna Nordqvist will get a 2 stroke penalty. Brittany Lang closing in US Women's Open title. pic.twitter.com/kyreFCY1x0

I believe that the U.S. Golf Association (USGA), which sanctions the U.S. Women’s Open golf championship and some other golf tournaments, including the U.S. Open golf championship, did a far better job of handling the video review in regards to the Nordqvist grounded club situation in the U.S. Women’s Open than the Dustin Johnson moved ball situation that occurred during the final round of regulation in the U.S. Open, which is also sanctioned by the USGA. In that scenario, Johnson’s ball moved on the 5th green at Oakmont County Club in Pennsylvania, and he was initially given no penalty, since a rules official on-course ruled that he had not caused his ball to move. However, Johnson was notified several holes later that his score on the 5th hole was under video review, and it was after his round that he was notified that he had incurred a one-stroke penalty for causing his ball to move on the green without actually taking a stroke. This caused nearly everybody with an interest in golf to criticize the USGA for their handling of the Dustin Johnson moved ball scenario, and rightfully so, since Johnson was not notified of the penalty until after he had completed his round, even though the moved ball situation occurred less than halfway through his round.

If you were to ask me whether or not the USGA has learned from its video review mistake, the short answer would be yes.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Features on Windows 10 may vary from computer to computer.

For nearly a week, I’ve been using the new Windows 10 PC operating system on my laptop computer, having recently upgraded from Windows 7.

Is the Windows 10 perfect? No, as it’s virtually impossible for any computer operating system to be truly perfect. However, it’s a good operating system, and I’m going to give my 100% honest thoughts about it.

THE UPGRADE

I initially had quite a bit of trouble getting the Windows 10 upgrade program to work, as it wouldn’t fully initialize for some reason. However, a day or two after the July 29 release date, I finally got the upgrade program to initialize.

Once the upgrade program initialized, it didn’t take as long as I thought it would for me to install Windows 10, only taking me about 40 minutes or so (I expected it would take 2 hours or more).

FAVORABLE ASPECTS

I find the Windows 10 operating system to be, in general, very functional. There are many apps that I find to be very useful (although app quality varies wildly from one app to the next), and I also like the new start menu design.

Me using the web note feature on the Microsoft Edge web browser to autograph the front page of this blog! (Captured July 30, 2015)

The new Microsoft Edge web browser that comes with Windows 10 is far better and easier to use than the old Internet Explorer browser that came with previous Windows versions.

Having upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, the apps that I installed on Windows 7, but not all of the ones that came with Windows 7, still work on Windows 10, so Windows 10 has at least some level of backwards compatibility.

The Windows Store feature is fantastic, including clearly displaying whether or not a particular app is free (I only download apps that are free to download on my computer).

The notification sidebar works great (including notifying me of new emails), and, if the new notification sound gets annoying for me, I can turn on quiet hours to get the computer to stop playing sounds every time there’s a new notification.

Starting up and shutting down the computer is somewhat quicker for me on Windows 10 than on Windows 7. This is especially the case in regards to shutting down the computer.

UNFAVORABLE ASPECTS

When Windows 10 starts up, it brings up the lock screen instead of the login page (for me to use Windows 10, I have to enter my Microsoft Account password). In order to bring up the login page, I have to use the mouse or touchpad (I have a touchpad on my laptop itself, and I also use a USB wireless mouse) and drag the lock screen upwards to get to the login page. Obviously, I would prefer that the login page be the first thing that comes up at startup instead of the lock screen.

I’ve had minor issues with some apps on Windows 10, most notably needing to use the Ctrl+V keyboard command for pasting text to where I write blog posts on this WordPress-based blog on Microsoft Edge and having syncing problems on the Mail app.

The Cortana intelligent personal assistant feature isn’t all that great, mostly serving as a voice web search for me. For example, when I ask Cortana to do a unit conversion of some kind (miles to kilometers, etc.), instead of bringing up the Calculator app (which, in Windows 10, is fantastic and includes a great unit conversion feature), it brings up a Bing search, and Bing is absolutely awful when it comes to unit conversions.

RECOMMENDED APPS

Asphalt 8: Airborne – This arcade automobile racing game is absolutely fantastic, with great graphics and several different types of racing (such as regular races, drifting, elimination, infected racing). Unlike a lot of racing games, Asphalt 8 works great with a keyboard. While Asphalt 8 is free to download, and much of the game can be played for free, some items in the game require money to be unlocked.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection – This card game is actually five games in one, as it has five different forms of solitaire: Klondike (regular solitaire), FreeCell, Spider, Pyramid, and TriPeaks. Again, there are some features of this game that require payment, although the game is free to download, and many features of the game are free.

My drawing of a curling sheet on Microsoft Fresh Paint.

Fresh Paint – Unlike the traditional MS Paint, which is included in Windows 10 (at least on my computer), Fresh Paint is designed to simulate painting artwork on canvas, without the mess of actually painting artwork on canvas, and it does a very good job at that. You can save pictures as JPG or PNG files, so, if you want to send someone who uses an older version of Windows a Fresh Paint picture, they can view the picture you sent them, although they can’t use Fresh Paint themselves. There are some features that require payment, but the download is free, and the core features of the app are free.

Character Map – In addition to the old MS Character Map (which is still available on my computer), there’s also a character map app produced by Motile Bytes. The Motile Bytes-produced Character Map has a couple of different features that make it better than the old MS Character Map: First, it allows you to create a list of favorite characters (which works best if there are characters that aren’t on your keyboard, but you commonly use for whatever reason). Second, it looks snazzier than the old Windows Character Map. This app is absolutely, 100% free!

I’ve enjoyed working with Windows 10 in my first few days with the new operating system. On a scale of -10 (worst) to +10 (best, I’ll give Windows 10 a +7.

ABC has aired the first episode of a seven-part game show miniseries called 500 Questions, in which a single contestant tries to answer 500 trivia questions correctly for cash. Six more episodes are scheduled to air over most ABC affiliates; the next episode is scheduled to air tonight at 8 P.M. Eastern/7 P.M. Central, with the remaining episodes scheduled to air this coming Friday and Monday through Thursday next week. Check your local listings for air dates and times.

The show’s gameplay involves a single contestant, a challenger, and trivia questions. A single game consists of 10 rounds, with a total of 50 questions per round. In each round, ten categories of questions are used, with five questions per category. Should the contestant complete all ten rounds by answering 500 questions, the contestant wins the game. Should, at any point in the game, the contestant give three consecutive incorrect answers, the game ends, the contestant is eliminated, and the challenger becomes the new contestant. Should the contestant answer the 50th question in a round correctly, the challenger is eliminated and is replaced by a new challenger. Usually, the contestant picks which category will be used for a particular question, with one exception: When the contestant has given two consecutive incorrect answers, the challenger picks the category. The host of the show is Richard Quest, who hosts a business news program on CNN International and occasionally appears on some programs on the U.S. version of CNN.

There are four different types of question formats that are used on 500 Questions:

Regular – For regular questions, the contestant has ten seconds to give a single correct answer to a trivia question. Should the contestant’s first answer be correct, the contestant banks $1,000, except for the 25th and (presumably) 50th questions of each round, where the contestant wins $5,000 that is his/hers to keep, no matter what. Should the contestant give the correct answer within the ten-second time limit, the contestant is credited with a correct answer, but doesn’t bank any money. Should the contestant fail to give the correct answer within ten seconds, the contestant is credited with a wrong answer.

Battle – For battle questions, the contestant and the challenger go back and forth providing answers to a question with multiple correct answers. When it’s his or her turn, each player has five seconds to give a correct answer. Should all of the correct answers be given, or should the challenger give a wrong answer, the contestant is credited with a correct answer and banks $1,000. Should the contestant either give a wrong answer or fail to give an answer within five seconds on his/her turn, the contestant is credited with a wrong answer.

Top 10 – For top 10 questions, either the contestant or the challenger has to provide five correct answers to a question, with a 15-second time limit and a maximum of ten answer attempts. The contestant can either play the question or pass the question to the challenger. Should the contestant opt to play the question gives five correct answers without running out of time or answer attempts, the contestant is credited with a correct answer and banks $1,000. Should the contestant opt to pass the question, and the challenger runs out of time or answer attempts before giving five correct answers, the contestant is credited with a correct answer and banks $1,000. Should the contestant play the question and run out of time or answer attempts before giving five correct answers, the contestant is credited with a wrong answer. Should the contestant pass the question, and the challenger gives five correct answers without running out of time or answer attempts, the contestant is credited with a wrong answer.

Triple Threat – For triple threat questions, the contestant has to provide three correct answers to a question, with a ten-second time limit. Should the contestant give three correct answers within the 10-second time limit, the contestant banks $3,000 and is credited with a correct answer. Should the contestant run out of time before giving three correct answers, the contestant is credited with a wrong answer.

Since the contestant on the first episode didn’t reach the 50th question before the end of the episode, I don’t know if the contestant wins the money he/she has banked for giving a correct answer on the 50th question and starts winning money for each question after the 50th question, or if the contestant wins the money he/she has banked for a correct answer on the 50th question of each round.

Below the line break is my review of 500 Questions.

Format

The format of the show is going to receive low marks from me, for one simple reason: There’s only seven scheduled episodes, and the contestant on the first episode isn’t currently on track to answer 500 questions before the end of the seventh episode. In fact, the first of ten rounds was still in progress at the end of the first episode! However, there are a couple of good things about the show’s format: First, the questions are difficult, as one would expect from a primetime quiz show, but not ridiculously difficult. Second, there’s no lifelines or multiple choice answers to make things easier for the contestant. I’ll give the format a 4 on a scale of 0 to 10.

Host

The host of the show is Richard Quest, who, to my knowledge, has no prior experience hosting a game show and has spent most, if not all, of his broadcasting career in cable news. However, Quest is a surprisingly good game show host, having not made any mistakes that I noticed on the first episode and having conducted himself in an engaging, professional manner. One issue I do have with Quest is that he’s not that great at explaining the rules of the game, although he didn’t explain anything incorrectly on the first episode that I noticed. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Quest is considered as a possible host of the syndicated game show Jeopardy! when Alex Trebek decides to retire, probably in 2018. I’ll give Quest a 8 on a scale of 0 to 10.

Set

The show’s set is very dark, even by the standards of a primetime quiz show, although I didn’t have any difficulty reading most of the graphics that were displayed in the studio. The only studio graphics that I had trouble reading were the category labels, as the font for them is too crunched down for me to see without my eyeglasses. I’ll give the show’s set a 5 on a scale of 0 to 10.

Conclusion

On a scale of 0 to 30, 500 Questions earns a score of 17. While the show’s format is overly long and is filmed in a very dark studio, the show’s host and questions with just the right difficulty make it worth the seven episodes the series is scheduled for.

Aaron Camp, Executive Producer

If I were the executive producer of this show, I would completely reformat the show, rename the show, and hope that the show would get at least a 13-week run on a major network, probably in primetime. Here’s how I would format the show:

The show would be renamed 50 Questions.

Money banked would be won for every tenth question answered correctly.

Battle questions and top 10 questions would be worth $2,000.

Ten consecutive correct answers by the contestant would eliminate the challenger.

A Who Wants to be a Millionaire?-style fast finger segment, but with typed answers instead of multiple-choice answers, would be used to select contestants and challengers.

50 questions answered correctly without three consecutive wrong answers would result in the contestant winning the game.

The set would be nowhere near as dark.

The grand prize for winning the game would consist of, in addition to the money won by correct answers during the game, a jackpot consisting of a luxury or sports car, a few other nice prizes (such as trips, boats, trailers, rooms of furniture, full set of kitchen appliances, etc.), and a very large amount of cash, with any unearned cash that was banked being added to the jackpot each time a contestant fails to outright win the game.

While I don’t think that 500 Questions is going to last more than the seven episodes it’s currently scheduled for, it’s an interesting game show.

In the wake of Republican-controlled state governments in Indiana and Arkansas passing religious discrimination laws, right-wing bible-thumpers have tried to frame small businesses who refuse to bake cakes containing messaging that LGBT people would find highly offensive. The bible-thumpers are doing this by trying to order a cake containing anti-LGBT messaging and, when the business refuses to make such a cake for them, claiming that the business is discriminating against them.

Azucar Bakery, a Denver, Colorado small business that makes cakes and Peruvian-style desserts, was the target of a bogus legal complaint for refusing to make a cake that contained offensive anti-LGBT messaging. Bill Jack, an anti-LGBT bigot from Castle Rock, Colorado, tried to order a cake from Azucar Bakery that featured icing depicting two groomsmen with a red “X” over them and messages claiming that homosexuality is a sin. Marjorie Silva, the owner of Azucar Bakery, refused to write the messages that Jack wanted on his cake, and Silva offered to bake a cake that contained no messages whatsoever and give Jack a pastry bag and icing so that he could decorate the cake with bigotry himself. Jack filed a state civil rights complaint against Silva and Azucar Bakery, and the Colorado Civil Rights Division rejected Jack’s complaint, ruling that Silva and Azucar Bakery did not discriminate against Jack. Azucar Bakery is selling t-shirts with anti-hate messages printed on them; you can buy the t-shirts here.

Cut the Cake Bakery, a Longwood, Florida small business that also makes cakes, has been subjected to threats and negative online reviews for refusing to provide bigoted televangelist Joshua Feuerstein with a cake decorated with anti-LGBT messaging. After Feuerstein uploaded a video of his phone call with Cut the Cake Bakery to YouTube, Feuerstein’s bigoted followers posted negative reviews of Cut the Cake Bakery online and left phone messages threatening the owner of the business, Sharon Haller. Cyndol Knarr, Haller’s daughter, has launched a GoFundMe campaign to support Cut the Cake Bakery; you can donate to that campaign here.

What the bible-thumping bigots in this country don’t understand is that refusing to provide a certain type of product, in this case, cakes decorated with hateful messages that gays, lesbians, bisexual people, and transgender people would find highly offensive, is not discrimination, so as long as their policy to not provide certain types of products is applied equally to all customers. What is discrimination is when a business refuses to serve customers because of who they are, such as the Walkerton, Indiana-based pizza parlor Memories Pizza publicly refusing to cater to the weddings of same-sex couples because the people who are getting married are of the same gender. Business owners have the right to refuse to manufacture and/or sell a product that they don’t want to provide to anybody, whether it be because the product in question conflicts with their values or otherwise.

I strongly oppose this effort by right-wing hate mongerers to frame small businesses who are unwilling to sell anything with bigotry and hate speech on it.

Early this morning, I published a satirical April Fools blog post about Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature wanting to legally ban curling in Wisconsin. In reality, Wisconsin Republicans currently have no intention of banning curling in the Badger State, so curling is safe in Wisconsin, at least for now.

However, my April Fools blog post has received an unusually large amount of attention for a small-time blog like The Progressive Midwesterner. In fact, my April Fools post has received, by far, the most attention of any blog post I’ve written in this blog’s history. My April Fools post has received over 4,000 page views, has been shared over 1,000 times on Facebook, and has even received international attention via a favorable review of my post in an online article by Yahoo! Sports Canada. Don Landry, the author of the Yahoo! Sports Canada piece on curling-related April Fools jokes, wrote that I did a “nice job” with my April Fools post, and he also praised me for “densifying it with the kind of paragraph you’d expect to see in a typical legislative story and the interest groups involved in its debate”.

The Progressive Midwesterner will resume its normal operation of providing commentary on actual political and non-political happenings in Illinois, Wisconsin, and elsewhere tomorrow.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is considering running for the Democratic presidential nomination in next year’s presidential election, has launched a redesigned campaign website at berniesanders.com. The redesigned Sanders website only references Sanders’s home state of Vermont on the biography portion of his campaign website and on the campaign mailing address at the bottom of the website, which is a clear indication to me that Sanders is likely going to run for president. Given that Sanders has public stated that he’s not interested in being a spoiler in a general election, Sanders is likely going to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Please note that Sanders has not formally announced his intention to run for president at this time.

I find Sanders’s new campaign website to be very cool-looking and informative. Sanders’s new website has a detailed biography, which includes information about his progressive track record as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the smallest city that is the largest city of a state in the entire country, as well as his progressive track record as a member of both houses of Congress. Sanders’s new website also has a detailed campaign platform, which includes support for fixing crumbling infrastructure, taking “bold action” on climate change, expanding social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicaid, support for single-payer healthcare, breaking up large banks, making higher education more affordable, ending NAFTA and other “disastrous trade policies”, equal pay for equal work, raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, allowing for the card check method to make it easier for workers to organize a labor union, and providing assistance to worker co-ops. About the only things in the platform I’d change if I were running Sanders’s campaign would be to replace the “pay equity for women workers” heading with a “pay equity for working women” heading and add more policy specifics to many of the parts of the platform. Finally, Sanders has a list of scheduled events on his campaign website. I rate the new Sanders campaign website a 9 on a 1-to-10 scale.

While Bernie Sanders has yet to formally announce a presidential bid, he’s taken yet another step towards running for president by launching a redesigned campaign website.

Since being re-elected in 2012, President Barack Obama has declared war on Social Security by threatening to cut benefits, has presided over a Bush-Obama surveillance state that has violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the American people, refused to issue an executive order on immigration, and has spent more time trying to compromise with far-right Republicans that are completely unwilling to compromise with anybody.

Then throw in Democratic U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and gubernatorial candidates who have run awful campaigns, antagonized progressives, and have flatly refused to fight for anything, and we now have a Democratic Party that is, for all intents and purposes, effectively dead. Republicans are going to gain upwards of two dozen seats in the U.S. House, take control of the U.S. Senate, and score a net gain of state governorships. Even in states like Illinois, Michigan, and Maryland, which are usually thought of as Democratic strongholds, Republican candidates won gubernatorial races in each of those states.

Although reasons for Democratic losses vary widely by race to race, the #1 reason why the Democratic Party has been handed massive defeats tonight is the party leadership effectively treating progressives as if they don’t exist, even though they are the core of support for the party. Democratic governors, U.S. Representatives, U.S. Senators, and candidates for those offices have, among other things supported fracking, pension theft, free trade agreements, privatizing public education, the Keystone XL pipeline, tax breaks for businesses, and Republican witchhunts against Democrats, as well as opposed environmental regulations, common-sense gun control measures like background checks, and even health insurance for millions of Americans. In many states/areas of the country, progressive ideals like raising the minimum wage, protecting reproductive rights, legalizing marijuana, and expanding Medicaid got significantly more votes in many parts of the country than most or all Democratic candidates did in those states/areas, indicating that there are people who are politically left-wing but, for whatever reason, vote for Republican candidates.

Pat Quinn, who lost re-election in the Illinois gubernatorial race, is probably the single-best example of someone who has alienated nearly every political ally and lost re-election because of it. In the past four years, Quinn gave out special tax breaks to two of the largest corporations in Illinois (Sears and CME Group), gerrymandered Illinois’s congressional and state legislative districts, opened up Illinois to fracking, and enacted a pension theft scheme that was partially struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court. Additionally, Quinn picking Paul Vallas, a supporter of Michelle Rhee’s anti-public education ideology, further alienated progressives, making his problems with Illinois progressives even worse. Because of all of that, Illinois will have a far-right Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, who wants to run Illinois like his venture capital company that did more to destroy jobs than create jobs, screw the poor in every way possible, and destroy the public education system in Illinois.

However, Democrats alienating progressives wasn’t the only reason why Democrats lost big time in this year’s midterm elections. The gutlessness of many Democratic candidates was one reason why Democrats lost big time. One of the best examples of this is Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic opponent to presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. During her Senate campaign, Grimes largely distanced herself from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), whose Kentucky state health insurance exchange is known as Kynect. Grimes could have centered her campaign around McConnell wanting to repeal the ACA (which would result in the repeal of Kynect) if she wanted to. Instead, she tried to make the race a referendum on McConnell, and it didn’t work. Another reason why some Democrats lost their races was the candidates themselves running flat-footed or even completely out-of-touch campaigns. Bruce Braley and Mark Udall are two examples of this. Braley, who lost the Iowa U.S. Senate race to Republican whacko Joni Ernst, came across to Iowa voters as an elitist and focused largely on issues that aren’t top priorities among Iowa voters (although they are very important issues), such as reproductive rights and student debt. Had Braley focused his campaign on issues like the minimum wage and wind energy, he might have won the election. Udall, who lost the Colorado U.S. Senate race to Republican extremist Cory Gardner, seemed to have all sorts of trouble trying to getting Democratic voters to mail their ballots in under Colorado’s new vote-by-mail system for whatever reason and didn’t really take his Republican challenger seriously for much of the campaign, and that’s the two primary reasons why Udall lost.

You add all of those reasons up and more and you get the atrocious campaign of Mary Burke, the Democrat who lost the Wisconsin gubernatorial election to far-right Republican incumbent Scott Walker, who will likely be the Republican presidential nominee two years from now. Not only did Burke alienate progressives in numerous ways (such as supporting parts of Scott Walker’s union-busting law that dealt with public employees being forced to overpay into pension and health care plans, supporting Common Core State Standards, refusing to support marijuana legalization, emphasizing “bipartisanship” with far-right Republicans at every opportunity, etc.), act like a gutless wimp for the entire campaign (such as largely refusing to call out Walker for the corruption in his administration until late in the campaign) and run a flat-footed and out-of-touch campaign (such as having an inner circle mentality throughout the campaign and running TV ads praising Ronald Reagan and trying to pass off someone working 60+ hours per week as a success story), she also had Democratic party bosses and political operatives bully any other Democrat who tried to run against her, fueling a negative perception that Burke was only interested in serving the powers to be of the Democratic Party and nobody else.

Another factor as to why 2014 has been a terrible year for Democrats is the lack of an unified party message, largely due to the Democratic Party being too big of a tent for its own good. The fact that Democrats range anywhere from left-wing to center-right on the ideological spectrum makes a unified party message of any kind practically impossible, and, when there is a unified party message, it’s in the form of calling for bipartisanship and compromise at virtually every opportunity. What most Democrats who run for public office don’t understand is that, while “bipartisanship” and “compromise” are approved of by most Americans, “bipartisanship” and “compromise” doesn’t motivate a single person to vote, and it’s virtually impossible to compromise with the far-right Republicans in this country.

In short, as a result of, among other things, Democrats alienating the progressive base of the party, Scott Walker will likely be the Republican presidential nominee two years from now, far-right Republicans will be running state governments in Democratic-leaning states, Republicans will have an even larger majority in the U.S. House than previously, and Republicans will control the U.S. Senate. The Democratic Party will only be consistently successful if and only if the party truly becomes a progressive, pro-middle class, pro-woman, pro-worker, pro-public education, pro-democracy, pro-environment, pro-peace, and pro-human rights party, the party and its candidates deliver a unified progressive message that can be used to drive progressives to the p0lls in large numbers and effectively attack Republican opponents, and Democratic elected officials and candidates actually fight to make America a better, more progressive place to live.